Poverty is entrenched in America, but there are always new ways to address it. Learn from experts who have studied it—and attacked it. Hear about innovative policy choices, including proposals for metropolitan-wide programs. Hear how to reclaim neighborhoods and families that have been stressed by recession and foreclosures. Come away inspired. Hosted by: Planning.

Work: John leads the organization's policy, lending, and housing development programs aimed at ensuring mixed income housing opportunity near job centers across metro Atlanta. Established in 1991,The Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership (ANDP), was created to address the diminishing supply of affordable housing in the Metropolitan Atlanta region as well as to help reclaim declining neighborhoods in its core. Throughout its 20-year history, ANDP has been supporting the creation of housing for people of low-to-moderate incomes. This dedicated work has resulted in the investment, building or renovation of more than 8,000 housing units in the Atlanta metropolitan region. Currently, ANDP is focused on addressing the region's foreclosure crisis and its impact on neighborhoods. John's public service includes elected office as a Fulton County Commissioner. He also served a two-year term on the Atlanta City Council. Prior to joining ANDP, John spent 11 years as the Regional Public Affairs Director at Fannie Mae where he helped create and lead Fannie Mae's housing and community development outreach network for an 11-state region. In this role, he worked with lenders, real estate professionals, homebuilders, elected officials and community leaders to identify and solve community housing needs. Prior to joining Fannie Mae, John was the City of Atlanta's first Director of Intergovernmental Affairs where he directed the City's State and Federal lobbying efforts. He also served as a special assistant to Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson. His early career was spent in fundraising positions with the American Red Cross and United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta. John currently serves on the Atlanta Regional Commission's 50 Forward Steering Committee, The Livable Communities Coalition Board of Trustees, Emory University Board of Visitors, the National Housing Conference Board of Trustees, and the Atlanta Terwilliger Center for Workforce Housing Steering Committee. He is playing active roles in local and national networks focused on stabilizing communities devastated by foreclosure including the Housing Partnership Network Neighborhood Stabilization Working Group and Enterprise Community Partner's Atlanta House to Home Initiative. John is a native of Atlanta and a graduate of Georgia Tech.

Work: Elizabeth Kneebone is a fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution and the co-author of Confronting Suburban Poverty in America (published by Brookings Press in 2013). Her work focuses mostly on urban and suburban poverty, metropolitan demographics, and tax policies that support low-income workers and communities. In Confronting Suburban Poverty in America, she and co-author Alan Berube address the changing geography of metropolitan poverty and offer pragmatic solutions for reforming and modernizing the nation’s policy and practice framework.